Curiosity stirs excitement about life on Mars

Man is always wanted to know whether there is life on other planets like our earth or not - and Mars have always been of the planets of human speculations.

And this time, the analysts reviewing the feedback provided by the NASA's Rover 'Curiosity' have been stirred by the adventures of the hi-tech robot.

Although, the scientists have not disclosed as yet, but they seem to find something that could be exciting. “This data is going to be one for the history books,” Grotzinger told a National Public Radio reporter. “It’s looking really good.”

Like a paleontologist looking for fossilized dinosaur bones, the robot is sifting through the red dirt of the planet’s Gale Crater hunting for a substance that may indicate life once existed on Mars – methane. Methane is an organic compound, which means it’s a building block for life.

The rover has made some concrete findings. Earlier this month, NASA announced the Rover had confirmed human astronauts would be able to survive the radiation levels in Mars’s atmosphere. 

Read more about Curiosity's Mission: news

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Mystery Over Shiny Particles On Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover had been on Mars 61 days when she gathered her first scoop of soil.

Before the one-ton robot could finish sifting through her first small bucket of dust, however, all the excitement shifted to a shiny object found in the sand near the rover.

They saw that a light-toned particle was embedded in a clump of Martian soil, leading researchers to believe that the material could be native to Mars. This find completely overturned their original argument: These mystery particles are not something from the rover.

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Following the discovery, a third scoop of soil was collected. This sample will now be run through Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument to figure out what it's made of, and hopefully find out what's making the sand so shiny.   

Read more: Business Insider

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Curiosity ready to dig into Martian sand

Mars' rover 'Curiosity' is already breaking ground on Mars, and now it's breaking ground in the social media universe.

The rover became "mayor" of Gale Crater on Friday by checking in through Foursquare, the location-based social network, just as it prepares to scoop up some Martian sand for testing. Curiosity had its own Twitter and Facebook accounts long before its momentous landing on the planet in August, and JPL plans to use Foursquare to keep track of the rover as it continues its two-year mission to search for signs of ancient microbial life.

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Foursquare names a user as mayor of a specific location for having more check-ins than anyone else. With its second check-in (the first was Wednesday), Curiosity has met the minimum requirement.

"We're all very excited," said Stephanie Smith, a social media manager for JPL "As the team names locations and the scientific team moves to new locations, the plan is for the rover to check in at each place."

Read more: sgv tribune

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Curiosity finds stream on Mars

NASA rover Curiosity has discovered gravel once carried by the waters of an ancient stream that 'ran vigorously' through the area, says the US space agency.

Evidence of water has been found before but this is the first time gravel from a stream bed has been discovered.

The rocky Hottah outcrop looks 'like someone jack-hammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it's really a tilted block of an ancient stream bed,' project scientist John Grotzinger said in a statement. Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars since early August, also investigated a second outcrop known as Link.

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Curiosity is on a two-year mission to investigate whether it is possible to live on Mars and to learn whether conditions there might have been able to support life in the past.

Read more: Sky News

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Uncertainty lingers on NASA's Mars program

Photo NASA

This week’s arrival of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity set the stage for a potentially game-changing quest to learn whether the planet most like Earth ever had a shot at developing life, but follow-up missions exist only on drawing boards.

The United States had planned to team up with Europe on a trio of missions beginning in 2016 that would culminate in the return of Mars soil and rock samples to Earth, an endeavor the National Research Council considers its top priority in planetary science for the next decade.

Citing budget concerns, the Obama administration terminated NASA’s participation in Europe’s ExoMars program earlier this year, spurring the U.S. space agency to re-examine its options before another flight opportunity comes and goes. Earth and Mars favorably align for launches about every 26 months.

The situation is complicated by massive budget overruns in the $2.5-billion US Curiosity mission, intended to determine if Mars could now or ever have supported microbial life, and in the $8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, a successor to the Hubble observatory.

Read details: Toronto Sun

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NASA's latest Mars adventure provides spectacular glimpses of alien landscape

NASA's latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.

This photo provided by NASA shows a full-resolution version of one of the first images taken by a rear Hazard-Avoidance camera on NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the Sunday evening, Aug. 5, 2012. The image was originally taken through a "fisheye" wide-angle lens, but has been "linearized" so that the horizon looks flat rather than curved. A Hazard-avoidance camera on the rear-left side of Curiosity obtained this image. Part of the rim of Gale Crater, which is a feature the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, stretches from the top middle to the top right of the image. One of the rover's wheels can be seen at bottom right. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views — of Mars and the journey there — are yet to come.

"Spectacular," mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. "We've not had that before."

Since parking itself inside an ancient crater Sunday night, the Curiosity rover has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings, including the 3-mile(4.8-kilometer)-high mountain it will drive to. It beamed back the first color picture Tuesday revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.

Read details: Phil Star

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NASA Launches Its Curiosity for Mars

Full Story / Photo: BBC Science and Environment 26 Nov

NASA has launched the most capable machine ever built to land on Mars, Saturday, Nov 26 at 10:02 a.m. EST. Nicknamed Curiosity, the one-tonne rover, tucked inside a capsule, left Florida on an Atlas 5 rocket at 10:02 local time (15:02 GMT), reports BBC News.

The spacecraft will take the rover will take eight and a half months to cross the vast distance to its destination.

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NASA's Mars Curiosity ready for Saturday Lift-Off

Full Story: Mashable 22 Nov

NASA’s $2.5 billion Mars rover dubbed “Curiosity” is set to liftoff on Saturday. 

NASA's Curiosity projected on Mars (Animation) 

The lift off will be start of a 350+ million mile journey to learn about the possibility of life on the red planet — either in the past or in the future. Check out the video above to learn more about the mission.

Watch video report

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